Pragmatic scooter instead of flashy Maybach

A few months ago, the man who had previously refused any interview surprisingly agreed to an interview. Actually, Apache 207, whose real name is Volkan Yaman, 25, doesn't even need to talk to journalists because he has achieved everything that can be achieved in the music industry in his five-year career, even without media coverage.

His songs have been heard millions of times and have been awarded 29 gold, 29 platinum and one diamond record. This week, Apache 207 broke the record set by Wham!'s "Last Christmas" with their 2019 song "Roller." No song has ever been longer in the German charts. German rap has long been the dominant youth culture in the schoolyards of this republic and also sets the pace on the entire German music market.

The man, who named himself after an Indigenous tribe of North America and his hometown's federal constituency, broke his silence in September 2022 after a documentary about him launched on Amazon Prime, the title of which quotes his most famous catchphrase: "Apache stays the same." Since his first big success "No Problem" in 2019, he had simply released hit after hit, but there was only basic data about the man behind it: Volkan Yaman, mid-20s, Turkish roots, high school and grew up in Ludwigshafen.

Now he sat there – Volkan Yaman, two meters tall, his long black hair pulled back in a ponytail – and talked about the music of his youth, with so much respect that you wouldn't even guess he's the man who finally dissolved German gangsta rap into mainstream pop.

In a way, Apache 207 is the child of a generation that lyrically continued to use the already established street narrative that had established a Bushido, a Sido or a Fler in the early 00s, but musically packaged it in a much more pop way. Artists like the KMN Gang enriched their sound with sugary melodies and lots of autotune. The central iconographic location of this music symbolically shifted from the ghetto of the '00s to the shisha café of the late 2010s, where the new songs not only ran in heavy rotation, but also became the soundtrack of a new lifestyle.

Apache takes the next step by relying on musical continuity to the shisha bar era, but breaking with the still predominant street iconography so clearly that the music is now finally suitable for the masses. Apache opposes the pragmatic scooter to a Mercedes-AMG caliber symbol of advancement that is omnipresent in German rap. "They talk to me about coke and stabbings/ But they have to go when our scooters start screaming again," they say.

In "Tuna

During the conversation, Apache shrugged. He didn't consciously break with tradition, said the man, who remains a mystery even after a personal conversation and a 90-minute documentary. But that it was all just a big coincidence, that he doesn't really know what he's doing, you don't buy that from Volkan Yaman. Even if he likes to hide behind his artificial character Apache 207, who wants to make some things look very easy and random.

The man who wrote German music history defies categorization. And just keep delivering. His collaboration with Udo Lindenberg, his song "Komet", has been number one in the German charts for a few weeks. At the end of the video, the two singers are sitting on the roof of the "Atlantic" hotel and smoking cigars. Arrived.